I don't really understand what the difference is...
I'm not stating that there isn't a difference because i've never actually programmed in neither. I thought that they were the same thing.
Could someone please explain to me what each one is?
TIA.

06-25-2004

Jeremy G

Winsock is the widget, gidget, gadget, or sprocket that allows for networking in win32. By that I mean it's the main thing you deal with, the functionality package?

Ports are part of the whole networking system, you use winsock to manage ports, sending, receiving, listening, idling etc.

06-25-2004

jimboob

Oh Cool thanks...
I was pretty sure that Ports are the things that I wanted to learn.
Just one more question.
Why would programs need to use several Ports?
Why cant they just receive input on one port?
Thanks

06-26-2004

Kristian_

Port 80 is allway's used for HTTP(web surfing) traffic. When you type in your browser www.cprogramming.com, your browser connect's to www.cprogramming.com server port 80. Then your browser(client) and www.cprogramming.com(server) are sending and reciving data from each other.

Each program, uses its own port, because that's the way internet is made. Two programms cannot use the same port. The data would be mixed up, and it would make big problems reading the recived data. Thats why every programm use its own port. But I belive there are other resions too. :p

*EDIT*

Forgot to tell you another thing. Webservers use 80 port. Your browser send's commands to webserver. These commands are standart for HTTP Protocol. Each protocol has its own standart commands, like SMTP Protocol(Used to send e-mail) uses commands like from, Rcpt to and others. Other protocols use diferent commands. Its like each protocol talks in its own language. :)